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Tuesday, September 22, 2009

My way or the highway.

I have driven all over the state, but there is no traffic like the Los Angeles traffic.This could be considered raucous, this could be considered unsafe, but that's the impulse of many movements, bursting ideas and for that, I'm all for.Stir up the pot and go with it.

Don't we all as bicycle enthusiast more than often imagine what it would be like to have those dinosaurus-sized cement mazes all to ourselves? Or wish we could just go ride on them with myriads of bicycles?! I know I do. In the meantime here's this video.Thanks to Christelle for sharing this.

5 comments:

In West LA, at least, the 405 has space alongside it for a beautiful bicycle path running for miles from, say, Culver City to the San Fernando Valley. You can even see the space on Google Maps:

http://tinyurl.com/n3ymlp

(Look at the beautiful strip of land to the right of the freeway.)

However, I don't believe the land belongs to Los Angeles, and as such the city cannot develop there. Too, the question remains whether any cyclist would really want to ride next to a noisy, polluted area.

Brent, that's exactly what New York did along the West Side Highway, which runs along the Hudson River. They cut in a bike path alongside it. They added medians with tall bushes and trees and greenery so that for the most part the highway isn't all you see. Of course it helps that they've been developing all the old Hudson River piers into parks and recreational spaces, and you also have the river on the other side.

But yeah, a bike freeway, why not? It actually kind of annoys me the way that "bike trail" is synonymous with "nature and recreation" in the USA. Nobody says, "oh, ew, why would I want to drive on a freeway out in the middle of nowhere with nothing pretty to look at?" when they're talking about getting in their car...

So why do they build roads where walking and cycling are forbidden, anyway? What kind of "safety consciousness" is that, when you just prohibit soft road users from using the road? That's car-centric thinking if there ever was...